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We cannot indeed escape positing these three, Being, Motion,
Stability, once it is the fact that the Intellect discerns them
as separates; and if it thinks of them at all, it posits them by
that very thinking; if they are thought, they exist. Things whose
existence is bound up with Matter have no being in the Intellect:
these three principles are however free of Matter; and in that
which goes free of Matter to be thought is to be.
We are in the presence of Intellect undefiled. Fix it firmly, but
not with the eyes of the body. You are looking upon the hearth of
Reality, within it a sleepless light: you see how it holds to
itself, and how it puts apart things that were together, how it
lives a life that endures and keeps a thought acting not upon any
future but upon that which already is, upon an eternal present- a
thought self-centred, bearing on nothing outside of itself.
Now in the Act of Intellect there are energy and motion; in its
self-intellection Substance and Being. In virtue of its Being it
thinks, and it thinks of itself as Being, and of that as Being,
upon which it is, so to speak, pivoted. Not that its Act
self-directed ranks as Substance, but Being stands as the goal
and origin of that Act, the object of its contemplation though
not the contemplation itself: and yet this Act too involves
Being, which is its motive and its term. By the fact that its
Being is actual and not merely potential, Intellect bridges the
dualism [of agent and patient] and abjures separation: it
identifies itself with Being and Being with itself.
Being, the most firmly set of all things, that in virtue of which
all other things receive Stability, possesses this Stability not
as from without but as springing within, as inherent. Stability
is the goal of intellection, a Stability which had no beginning,
and the state from which intellection was impelled was Stability,
though Stability gave it no impulsion; for Motion neither starts
from Motion nor ends in Motion. Again, the Form-Idea has
Stability, since it is the goal of Intellect: intellection is the
Form's Motion.
Thus all the Existents are one, at once Motion and Stability;
Motion and Stability are genera all-pervading, and every
subsequent is a particular being, a particular stability and a
particular motion.
We have caught the radiance of Being, and beheld it in its three
manifestations: Being, revealed by the Being within ourselves;
the Motion of Being, revealed by the motion within ourselves; and
its Stability revealed by ours. We accommodate our being, motion,
stability to those [of the Archetypal], unable however to draw
any distinction but finding ourselves in the presence of entities
inseparable and, as it were, interfused. We have, however, in a
sense, set them a little apart, holding them down and viewing
them in isolation; and thus we have observed Being, Stability,
Motion- these three, of which each is a unity to itself; in so
doing, have we not regarded them as being different from each
other? By this posing of three entities, each a unity, we have,
surely, found Being to contain Difference.
Again, inasmuch as we restore them to an all-embracing unity,
identifying all with unity, do we not see in this amalgamation
Identity emerging as a Real Existent?
Thus, in addition to the other three [Being, Motion, Stability],
we are obliged to posit the further two, Identity and Difference,
so that we have in all five genera. In so doing, we shall not
withhold Identity and Difference from the subsequents of the
Intellectual order; the thing of Sense has, it is clear, a
particular identity and a particular difference, but Identity and
Difference have the generic status independently of the
particular.
They will, moreover, be primary genera, because nothing can be
predicated of them as denoting their essential nature. Nothing,
of course we mean, but Being; but this Being is not their genus,
since they cannot be identified with any particular being as
such. Similarly, Being will not stand as genus to Motion or
Stability, for these also are not its species. Beings [or
Existents] comprise not merely what are to be regarded as species
of the genus Being, but also participants in Being. On the other
hand, Being does not participate in the other four principles as
its genera: they are not prior to Being; they do not even attain
to its level.
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